E. Hoffmann Price's Exotic Adventures Read online

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFO

  A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

  WORSE THAN DEATH

  GAMBLE WITH THE GODS

  KISS OF DEATH

  TWO AGAINST THE GODS

  WOLVES OF KERAK

  SCORCHED EARTH

  VENGEANCE IN SAMARRA

  ISLAND TRAMP

  YOU CAN’T EAT GLORY

  BONES FOR CHINA

  DRAGON’S DAUGHTER

  The MEGAPACK® Ebook Series

  COPYRIGHT INFO

  E. Hoffmann Price’s Exotic Adventures MEGAPACK® is copyright © 2016 by Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.

  * * * *

  The MEGAPACK® ebook series name is a trademark of Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.

  * * * *

  “Worse Than Death” was originally published in Spicy-Adventure Stories, September 1935.

  “Gamble With The Gods” was originally published in Top-Notch, September/October 1937.

  “Kiss Of Death” was originally published in Spicy-Adventure Stories, November 1937, under the pseudonym “Hamlin Daly.”

  “Two Against The Gods” was originally published in Golden Fleece, December 1938.

  “Wolves Of Kerak” was originally published in Golden Fleece, December 1938.

  “Scorched Earth” was originally published in Speed Adventure Stories, July 1944.

  “Vengeance In Samarra” was originally published in Short Stories, June 10, 1940.

  “Island Tramp

  Originally published in Spicy-Adventure Stories, December 1940.

  “South Sea Justice” was originally published in Spicy-Adventure Stories, February 1941.

  “You Can’t Eat Glory” was originally published in Short Stories, October 1946.

  “Bones For China” was originally published in Speed Adventure Stories, July 1945.

  “Dragon’s Daughter” was originally published in Witchcraft & Sorcery #6, May 1971.

  A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

  Welcome to E. Hoffmann Price’s Exotic Adventures MEGAPACK®! Wildside Press, in association with Mr. Price’s heirs, is dedicated to making the extensive body of work of this pulpsmith extraordinaire accessible once again to the public through our line of MEGAPACK® collections.

  Edgar Hoffmann Price (July 3, 1898 – June 18, 1988) was born in Fowler, California. A graduate of West Point, he served in World War (followed by military duty in Mexico and the Philippines) and was a champion fencer and boxer—fellow pulp author Jack Williamson referred to him as “a real-life soldier of fortune.” Hoffmann was also something of a polymath—a Republican and a Buddhist, he was also an amateur Orientalist, and a student of the Arabic language.

  Price’s first fiction sale was in 1924 to Droll Stories magazine and over the years he befriended, corresponded with, and personally met many authors of the pulp era including Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith and H.P. Lovecraft. He wrote hundreds of stories for many pulp magazines (including Weird Tales) in varied genres like horror, detective, adventure, fantasy and science fiction. Wildside Press is proud to make his work available to readers again. Due to the inaccessibility of much of Price’s work (he kept no manuscript archive and so we must resort to those original publication copies we can track down) we have decided to package the material into themed Megapacks, highlighting specific genres he worked in. Later volumes will be released as we gather further material (any collectors interested in aiding our endeavors by supplying photocopies from their collections are strongly urged to contact Wildside

  E. Hoffmann Price’s Exotic Adventures MEGAPACK® contains 11 stories and short novels set in a wide range of locales: Europe, Polynesia, Asia, the Middle East, etc. Their settings also range chronologically, from historical adventures to contemporary thrillers and were all published between 1935 and 1945 (with an outlier from 1971 as the finale). These are full-blooded, two-fisted tales of warriors throughout the ages, seeking glory and triumph.

  We hope you enjoy these rip-roaring tales of adventure and daring-do. We will be releasing additional collections of Price’s work in the near future. These include:

  E. Hoffmann Price’s Two-Fisted Detective MEGAPACK®

  E. Hoffmann Price’s War And Western Action MEGAPACK®

  E. Hoffmann Price’s Fantasy & Science Fiction MEGAPACK®

  The Tenth Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK®: E. Hoffmann Price

  E. Hoffmann Price’s Fables of Ismeddin MEGAPACK®

  E. Hoffmann Price’s Pierre D’artois: Occult Detective & Associates MEGAPACK®

  —Shawn Garrett

  Editor, Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidepress.com

  ABOUT THE SERIES

  Over the last few years, our MEGAPACK® ebook series has grown to be our most popular endeavor. (Maybe it helps that we sometimes offer them as premiums to our mailing list!) One question we keep getting asked is, “Who’s the editor?”

  The MEGAPACK® ebook series (except where specifically credited) are a group effort. Everyone at Wildside works on them. This includes John Betancourt (the publisher), Carla Coupe, Steve Coupe, Shawn Garrett, Helen McGee, Bonner Menking, Sam Cooper, Helen McGee and many of Wildside’s authors…who often suggest stories to include (and not just their own!)

  RECOMMEND A FAVORITE STORY?

  Do you know a great classic science fiction story, or have a favorite author whom you believe is perfect for the MEGAPACK® ebook series? We’d love your suggestions! You can post them on our message board at http://wildsidepress.forumotion.com/ (there is an area for Wildside Press comments).

  Note: we only consider stories that have already been professionally published. This is not a market for new works.

  TYPOS

  Unfortunately, as hard as we try, a few typos do slip through. We update our ebooks periodically, so make sure you have the current version (or download a fresh copy if it’s been sitting in your ebook reader for months.) It may have already been updated.

  If you spot a new typo, please let us know. We’ll fix it for everyone. You can email the publisher at [email protected] or use the message boards above.

  WORSE THAN DEATH

  (Also published as “Man Hunt”)

  Originally appeared in Spicy-Adventure Stories, September 1935.

  Even though business was rotten in Damascus, Ibrahim the dragoman found it more and more difficult to keep his mind on his work. Sitti Ayesha, reclining among a heap of cushions, looked like a cigarette ad come to life; her olive-tinted curves smiled tantalizingly through the shimmering silk that caressed her nicely rounded hips.

  And whenever Ibrahim managed to deflect his gaze from somewhere south of the broad jeweled girdle that encircled her slender waist, he was dazzled by the warmly tinted flesh that led up toward breasts concealed by hammered silver brassieres; but he finally abandoned his ponderings on force vs. persuasion, and regarded his lovely client’s dark eyes and petulant, crimson lips.

  “But they really are sheikhs,” he declared. “Aristocratic Arabs from the desert.”

  “They remind me of goats,” declared Sitti Ayesha, her nose wrinkling in disgust. “And I’m not just referring to their looks.”

  The conversation was in English. If you took time to look at Sitti Ayesha’s passport—one of her concealed assets—you would learn that she was Amelia Burns, of White Horse, Oklahoma. Her olive skin and potful of money were both inherited from an Indian grandfather who had pitched his teepee next door to an oil well.

&nb
sp; She had everything but romance—hence her masquerading in Damascus, and her disappointment at finding that the sheikh of song and story is an odoriferous old gentleman badly in need of bug powder.

  As for Ibrahim: a dragoman is a tourist’s guide. The term comes from a Turkish word that originally meant interpreter, and now means gyp artist. Ibrahim, moreover, had lost nothing by spending a dozen years in Manhattan learning American language and customs.

  “But you said you wanted to meet a sheikh—”

  He made a despairing gesture, and for a moment forgot his worries long enough to wonder whether Sitti Ayesha might shift enough to give him a view of points thus far concealed by the baffling draperies trailing from the broad, jeweled girdle. “Though they’d not care a lot for you. You’re entirely too thin.”

  Sitti Ayesha’s dark eyes blazed indignantly at the dirty jab. She jerked herself upright. The concealing wisps of silk hitched up and apart.

  “El hamdu lilahi!” gasped Ibrahim. “Praise God!”

  His strategy had worked.

  The view, though momentary, was enchanting. And before Sitti Ayesha knew what was happening, the dragoman had her in his muscular arms, trying to convince her there was no use importing romance from the desert. She was caught off guard, and for a moment the divan looked like the fourth down and one yard to go! Her silver brassieres clattered to the tile floor; but Sitti Ayesha’s henna-tinted nails raked the dragoman until he looked like a tom cat returning from a tough week-end.

  Yet Arab valor persisted, and though Sitti Ayesha did manage to keep her opponent at elbow’s length, Ibrahim was getting the better of the engagement. The girl from Oklahoma was weakening…”

  “Ibrahim,” reproved a caustic, feminine voice from the doorway, “is that any way to treat a client?”

  The flurry of silk and amber tinted legs subsided. A plump, rather nice-looking Syrian woman in her middle thirties reproachfully eyed the badly clawed dragoman: Ibrahim’s aunt, who was acting as Sitti Ayesha’s maid. Her presence was decidedly discouraging.

  “If Miss Burns doesn’t like sheikhs from the desert,” continued Aunt Fatimah, “maybe we can have her meet that Afghan prince, Muhammad Nadir Khan. He’s awfully handsome and wealthy.”

  “Oh, that’d just be splendid,” enthused Sitti Ayesha. Then, reproachfully regarding the dragoman, “Why on earth didn’t you tell me about him?”

  “Well, you said a sheikh,” protested Ibrahim. “A prince is something else!”

  “Fix it up right away.”

  Ibrahim flashed his aunt a deadly glance, and said to Sitti Ayesha, “But that will cost $500 extra. An Afghan prince is sort of special.”

  “I don’t care if it costs a thousand,” declared Sitti Ayesha. Oil heiresses are that way.

  She fumbled among the cushions and found a handbag. “Here’s a down payment. But if he’s as crummy as those sheikhs, the deal is off. I came to Damascus for romance.”

  Ibrahim made a nose dive for the money, bowed profoundly, and left the house.

  “Ya Allah!” he groaned, eyeing the fistful of cash. “May God curse all aunts!”

  His face lengthened until it looked like a coffin. He might have found a suitable sheikh, but an Afghan prince—! The nearest one he knew of was in Kabul, two thousand miles away. But something had to be done.

  Arab wit went into a one man huddle. After three cups of coffee, and a pipe at Marouf’s loquanda, Ibrahim began to brighten up. But it was not until he approached the American consulate that he really saw daylight. The broad-shouldered, lean, hawked-nosed American in expensive tweeds who was stepping to the street was his inspiration. Money, and lots of it. A rakish, adventurous seeming fellow. Sun-tanned, and athletic. Just the type but be wasn’t wearing the right clothes.

  As the American pocketed his passport, the dragoman stepped directly in front of him and bowed half way down to his knees.

  “Welcome, your Highness! God bless you! Back in Damascus again, praise Allah!”

  As he spoke, he seized and kissed the American’s hand.

  “What the hell’s all this about?” the American demanded, jerking away his hand.

  “Doesn’t your Highness remember old Ibrahim?” The dragoman was pained and grieved.

  “Where do you get this ‘your highness’ crap, anyhow? I’m Harrison Kane, from New York.”

  Ibrahim eyed him sharply, stroked his moustache, and shifted his skull cap back towards his left ear.

  “Mr. Kane, if you’re not Muhammad Nadir Khan, you ought to be. You’re a dead ringer!”

  Harrison Kane, hearing an Arab speaking Americanese became interested and sympathetic. Ibrahim explained.

  “It’s this way, Mr. Kane. I’m working for a Circassian girl with a coal scuttle of jack, and she’s stacked up like the front row of the Follies.”

  “Interesting, if true,” was Kane’s skeptical comment.

  “By God, it’s more than that,” assured Ibrahim, lowering his voice to a confidential whisper. His next few words were for Kane’s ear only: and they dealt with the charms of Circassian girls… Kane stroked his chin and listened…

  “Anyway,” resumed Ibrahim, “she’s got a crush on Prince Muhammad Nadir Khan. Half a dozen years ago she saw him riding through the streets of Kabul and took a heavy tumble. And now that her father is dead, and she’s inherited all his dough, and she heard the Prince had moved to Damascus, she packed up and here we are. Only—” And Ibrahim’s voice became husky, and great tears gleamed in his eyes. “Only, the Prince got killed in Egypt, and jeez, I just ain’t got the guts to go back and tell the poor kid. I didn’t hear about it till I just now passed the Prince’s house.”

  The dragoman sighed like a locomotive blowing off steam, and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his dejellab. An old Arabian custom.

  “By God, that is tough,” Kane agreed. Beauty in distress always is.

  “But when I saw you,” continued Ibrahim, “I thought someone was kidding me about the Prince having croaked. Honest, I did. So how about you meeting her. You could take his place. If you like her, okay. If not, just beat her up a couple times, and she’ll get her fill of Afghan princes—but it won’t be like learning her childhood romance is pushing up daisies in an Egyptian graveyard.”

  It was sorrowful, but Kane said, “Nuts! Even if I do look like Prince Whoozis, she’d tumble in a minute. I can’t talk this native lingo. I was just looking for an interpreter—one of these birds they call a dragoman.”

  “Praise God, you met me!” declared Ibrahim. “The dragomans of Damascus are a bunch of crooks. Me, I’m an American citizen—lived for years in New York, just came back to the old country, and got this job with Sitti Ayesha—that’s the gorgeous girl from Circassia.”

  “An honest to God Circassian girl?” Kane was becoming interested.

  “Sure. You know the kind—you read the Arabian Nights, ain’t you?”

  Kane nodded and smiled reminiscently. Twenty years ago, he had snitched the key to the locked cases in his father’s library and had read most of volume one of an unexpurgated edition before mother had caught him.

  “This’ll be better’n you read about,” assured Ibrahim.

  “But this matter of language,” reiterated Kane.

  “Simple. She talks only Circassian, and about a dozen words of Arabic. And the Prince speaks nothing but Afghan, and hardly any Arabic. Get it? Just make yourself pleasant, and if she says no, you won’t be able to understand, so just go ahead and make her happy.”

  It sounded screwy, but Kane remembered his Arabian Nights.

  “It’s a deal,” he declared. Then, reaching for his wallet: “How much do you get?”

  “My dear sir,” protested the horrified Ibrahim. “I’m just trying to save a lovely girl from a broken heart—”

  He sighed, and wiped his eyes.

  “Lead
on,” said Kane.

  “I’ll meet you at your hotel, as soon as I can pick up some Afghan clothes for you,” proposed the dragoman. “Then I’ll teach you a dozen words in Arabic.”

  “Right,” agreed Kane.

  Ibrahim lost no time finding the necessary masquerade then he hailed a taxi and dashed out to the Salahiyeh suburb to break the good news to Aunt Fatimah so she could prepare Sitti Ayesha for royalty.

  That evening Ibrahim arrayed Kane in a voluminous turban, an embroidered kaftan, a silver hiked tulwar, and riding breeches with English-made boots.

  “You look more a prince than he did himself,” declared Ibrahim. “This’ll be a cinch. Now let’s see how much Arabic you can remember.”

  “Ana ul amir—that means I’m the prince,” recited Kane. “Ruh—get the hell out! Shufi andak tashrab—what have you got to drink—”

  “Damn good Arabic,” approved Ibrahim. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait a minute,” Kane frowned. “How would you ask her—”

  “Don’t ask her! It’s the same in any language.”

  Half an hour later a hired Rolls Royce drew up in front of Sitti Ayesha’s house in the Salahiyeh suburb. Harrison Kane, hitching his belt so that the scabbard of his tulwar did not tangle up with his spurs, emerged from the glittering car, and approached the massive door of the white stone house. Ibrahim headed for the servants’ entrance.

  Kane pounded the heavy brazen knocker. A Negro doorkeeper admitted him and led the way across a courtyard, and then down a long vaulted hallway. The servant gestured for him to wait, then faded down a cross passage. Kane, peeping through the grating that pierced the door before him, promptly forgot his lines.

  Sitti Ayesha was a glamorous, gleaming length of warm, olive-tinted flesh stretched out on a Kashan rug. Her toenails were stained with henna, and heavy golden bands accentuated the slimness of her ankles and the fine long curve of her legs. The transparent, caressing fabric that clung to her thighs tantalized Kane’s questing glance, and the inward sweep of her waist was an invitation to squeeze her until she gasped.

  The peacock plume fan that Aunt Fatimah was slowly waving made the gauzy veil about her breasts ripple and then snuggle, closer.